I want to track an elected official without making multiple entries. Said elected official has 3 official offices in the state, one in DC, plus has a campaign office, and a personal address. Do I use the Accounts module to list the politician, then use contacts for each of the offices? How would I then assign the individuals managing each office to their location if I do it that way. Or do I do it in reverse, list down as an account each office, then have multiple entries for the politician in the contacts?

Can, therefore, a contact be tied to multiple accounts in a many to many relationship, or are the accounts to contacts an one to many relationship?

This brings up the second question of individuals we solicit for money, volunteers, etc. Logic says to put those in leads, but some of those leads would be technically accounts or contacts as well, again causing duplicate data in the table. Any suggestions on how to handle this? Again, database normalization rules tell me to only have the data in one location. Would you instead use accounts-contacts for these in a one to one relationship?

Yes, I know these are design questions, but I'm working with people who have little to no CRM experience - their previous attempt is so bad, I'm working from scratch. I want to do this so we have a minimum of duplication, because the data got to be so bad to be unusable when I was not involved.

Thanks for the suggestions,

David West